“Unlike many companies that fell into oblivion when the dot-com bubble popped,” he concludes, “the companies that have stuck around all took a long-term attitude. Those in the AI business need to remember this.”

Decades to go before AI matches humans

Victor Muntes-Mulero, Vice President of Strategic Research at CA Technologies, had this to say:

“On true general intelligence there has been a lot of work, but the whole scientific community agrees that it will take a very long term before we reach it. It will take decades.”

According to The Economic Times, Muntes-Mulero believes we have “a long path” before AI lives up to popular hype. He points to a volume of ethical concerns as evidence, including sexism in Google Translate and the ambiguity of social rules.

Maria Valez-Rojas, a research scientist with CA Tech’s Deep Dive Research initiative, adds words of caution about “collaborative robotics“.

For example, she says, “When you tell a robot to ‘clean up the mess’, it might proceed beyond the coffee spilled on the floor and wipe out the massive calculations that you have done the whole week on the blackboard. Because that may mean ‘mess’ for it.”